I've been through a lot of ups and downs here and I don't think I've ever had a worse time here than now.
Do you remember any periods in the past when there was more tension and stress than now or when there were fewer reasons to stay?
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PNC may be different than custody, but it’s a major employer in a region where at least 1/7 of BNYM employees are and many have gone there in the past. Once you work in securities services, you’re not bound there for the rest of your career. I joined a major competitor but a completely different LOB.
@2abz Uhhh… yeah. We wound up with the TARP funds, inherited Doug Schulman, the corrupt IRS chairman who we-ponized the IRS under Obama.
PNC and BNYM are in completely different businesses, Retail Banking, vs Custody for the uninformed.
It’s frightening to see how uneducated our workers are in business, Accounting, Finance and the banking industry itself.
Is it really fair to count 2007 (merger), 2008/2009 (recession), and 2000 (dotcom burst) in the same vein as 2019 or now? All banks and companies probably suffered heavily during those times. Those were infrastructural economy issues. Whether BNYM did it worse, I don't know, I wasn't there. But while PNC was giving people 1000$, BNYM was squandering it on tech that didn't deliver. BOA is offering sabbatical while BNYM is slowly taking stuff away.
I'd be interested to know when the ups were. For me they were always downs, really downs, and extremely downs.
Early 2019 was a walk in the park in comparison to 2000 - 2010 era. I guess that you really cant get perspective until you live through some bad times. Inflation is an issue, but far less than the entire 1970s and the misery index.
2000 Y2K through 82% NASDAQ crash through 2010 toxic assets were by the far the worst era in modern history for financial services. 10% per year displacements annually here and we became the bad bank with the TARP funds and Shulmann. Raises? Not a one for a decade. Every bit as bad as the 1929 crash, the NASDAQ crash ranks second U.S. history.
Early 2019 was very rough. WFH became highly debated months prior to 2019 (remember that thread on Mysource?) and people speculated that it would be taken away. They were right - as early 2019 was where CS really frowned upon it and made it clear during his townhalls. If you weren't in the office, you were "absent". Anyone remember that? you even had to fill out a form to work from home on an ad hoc basis though most direct managers didn't really enforce it - still, most didn't want to make waves so the status quo was everyone was in at 5 days a week. To add insult to injury, there were a lot of layoffs in 2019. I really thought certain teams would be completely dismantled and the company was trying to shoot itself in the foot. Many people speculated that BNYM was positioning itself to be acquired by JPM.
It got a little better towards the end of 2019 when CS was gone and took some of his lackeys with him - COVID certainly helped, too, as most people didn't have to commute for the next 2 years. Although the work was intense, not having that commute made a massive difference.
So yeah, 2019 was probably the most tense and stressful time, coming from someone who was with the company 15 years. But I think now there's a lot more to be concerned with. in 2019, it was easy to point fingers at CS and attribute everything wrong with the company to his ideas - he played the typical villain, but RV doesn't stand out as much and there are more hostile senior "leaders" among the EC and EC-1. You know who they are.. Benefits have declined over time and are only getting worse while layoffs are still in full force. We can't win new business because our service model has been gutted but we also can't onboard new business because we don't have capacity. We didn't have these issues 3 years ago - at least not to this degree. It's an uphill battle and you're just one stroke of bad luck away from complete catastrophe.
I truly believe we are at the lowest point so far - I thought 2019 was bad but clearly things have gotten worse. But it's possible to go down even further.
PS - there's no consistency on RTO. My manager can agree with us coming in two days a week, but if they track it across the company by badge swipes, how do I know if his manager or his manager's manager doesn't penalize me at some point down the road? Maybe other groups have been coming in four times so they get better performance/more incentive pool by default. The obscure method they equate butts in seats to performance create another losing and stressful scenario.